Lexicology: А Current Guide. Лексикология английского языка

Г.Н. Бабич 

LEXICOLOGY: A CURRENT GUIDE 

ЛЕКСИКОЛОГИЯ АНГЛИЙСКОГО ЯЗЫКА 

Учебное пособие 

10-е издание, стереотипное

Допущено Министерством образования и науки
Российской Федерации в качестве учебного пособия
для студентов высших учебных заведений, 
обучающихся по специальности «Иностранный язык» 

Москва
Издательство «ФЛИНТА» 
2019

УДК 811.111’373(075.8) 
ББК  81.432.1-3я73

   Б12 

Р е ц е н з е н т ы :

д-р филол. наук, проф. О.М. Карпова 

(Ивановский государственный университет); 
д-р филол. наук, проф. О.А. Леонтович 

(Волгоградский государственный педагогический университет) 

Б12         

Бабич Г.Н. 
     Lexicology : A Current Guide.  Лексикология английского языка 
[Электронный ресурс] : учеб. пособие / Г.Н. Бабич.  —  10-е изд., 
стер. — М. : ФЛИНТА,  2019. — 200 с.

ISBN 978-5-9765-0249-9 

В пособии освещены основные проблемы лексикологии в соответствии с действующими государственными стандартами и программой по 
данному курсу для студентов гуманитарных вузов. Теоретический материал тесно связан с упражнениями и заданиями, цель которых помочь 
студентам в практическом овладении основами лексикологии. В каждой 
главе даны ключевые вопросы для контроля знаний. Заключительная 
часть пособия содержит вопросы для самоконтроля, аутентичные отрывки для комплексного лексикологического анализа, которые могут быть 
использованы на учебных занятиях и для самостоятельной работы при 
совершенствовании навыков владения современным английским языком, 
определении основных понятий и терминов курса. 
Для студентов факультетов иностранных языков, филологических 
факультетов, отделений лингвистики университетов, аспирантов и интересующихся проблемами слова. 

УДК 811.111’373(075.8) 
ББК  81.432.1-3я73

ISBN 978-5-9765-0249-9 
  © Издательство «ФЛИНТА», 2008 

СONTENTS

Preface ..................................................................................................... 7
Introduction ............................................................................................. 8

Chapter 1

Language and Lexicology .......................................................................... 9
1.1. The Object of Lexicology ............................................................. 9
1.2. Branches of Lexicology .............................................................. 10
1.3. Lexicology and Sociolinguistics ................................................. 13
1.4. The Definition of the Word ........................................................ 16
Key Terms ............................................................................................... 18
Topics for Discussion and Exercises .......................................................... 18

Chapter 2

The Origins of English Words .................................................................. 20
2.1. Native Words ............................................................................. 22
2.2. Borrowings................................................................................. 24
2.3. Etymological Doublets .............................................................. 30
2.4. International Words ................................................................... 31
Key Terms ............................................................................................... 32
Topics for Discussion and Exercises .......................................................... 32

Chapter 3

Word Structure and Word Formation ....................................................... 36
3.1. Morpheme. Allomorph .............................................................. 37
3.2. Word Structure........................................................................... 39
3.3. Immediate Constituents Analysis............................................... 41
3.4. Affixation ................................................................................... 42
3.5. Conversion................................................................................. 46
3.6. WordComposition .................................................................... 48
3.7. Other Types of Word Formation................................................. 51
Key Terms ............................................................................................... 53
Topics for Discussion and Exercises .......................................................... 54

Chapter 4

Semantics ............................................................................................... 57
4.1. Semasiology or Semantics? ........................................................ 57
4.2. Denotation and Connotation..................................................... 59
4.3. Polysemy.................................................................................... 61
4.4. Componential Analysis .............................................................. 62
4.5. Semantic Change ....................................................................... 65
4.6. Secondary Ways of Semantic Change ........................................ 69
Key Terms ............................................................................................... 70
Topics for Discussion and Exercises .......................................................... 70

Chapter 5

The Vocabulary of a Language as a System .............................................. 74
5.1. Homonyms ................................................................................ 74
5.2. Synonyms .................................................................................. 77
5.2.1. The Nature of Synonymy ................................................ 77
5.2.2. The Definition of Synonyms ........................................... 79
5.2.3. Classification of Synonyms ............................................. 81
5.2.4. Euphemism ..................................................................... 82
5.3. Antonyms .................................................................................. 82
5.4. Hyponymy and Paronymy ......................................................... 84
Key Terms ............................................................................................... 85
Topics for Discussion and Exercises .......................................................... 86

Chapter 6

Combinability. Word Groups.................................................................... 90
Key Terms ............................................................................................... 95
Topics for Discussion and Exercises .......................................................... 95

Chapter 7

Phraseology ............................................................................................ 98
7.1. Semantic Classification of Phraseological Units .......................100
7.2. Structural Classification of Phraseological Units ......................101

7.3. Functional Classification of Phraseological Units ....................102
7.4. Contextual Classification of Phraseological Units ....................103
7.5. Prof. Kunin’s Classification of Phraseological Units ................103
7.6. Proverbs, Sayings, Quotations ...................................................105
Key Terms ..............................................................................................107
Topics for Discussion and Exercises .........................................................107

Chapter 8

Levels of Usage ......................................................................................111
8.1. Stylistic Differentiation of the English Vocabulary ....................112
8.2. The Varieties of English ............................................................117
8.3. Levels of Language....................................................................121
8.4. Registers ...................................................................................125
Key Terms ..............................................................................................128
Topics for Discussion and Exercises .........................................................128

Chapter 9

Lexicography .........................................................................................133

9.1. The History of Dictionary Making .............................................133

9.2. Classification of Dictionaries ....................................................136
Key Terms ..............................................................................................140
Topics for Discussion and Exercises .........................................................140

Chapter 10

American English ...................................................................................145
10.1. Spelling .....................................................................................146
10.2. Pronunciation ...........................................................................148
10.3. Punctuation ..............................................................................148
10.4. Numbers ...................................................................................149
10.5. Grammar ..................................................................................150
10.5.1. Use of the Present Perfect ............................................150
10.5.2. Possession ....................................................................150
10.5.3. The Verb Get .................................................................151

10.5.4. Past Simple/Past Participles .........................................151
10.5.5. Other Differences .........................................................152
10.5.6. Prepositions .................................................................153
10.6. Vocabulary ................................................................................153
10.7. African American Vernacular English (AAVE) ..........................158
Key Terms ..............................................................................................160
Topics for Discussion and Exercises .........................................................160

Chapter 11

A World English .....................................................................................163
11.1. Canadian English......................................................................163
11.2. Australian English .....................................................................164
11.3. New Zealand English ................................................................166
11.4. Indian English ..........................................................................167
11.4.1. Pronunciation ..............................................................168
11.4.2. Grammar .....................................................................168
11.4.3. Vocabulary: loans .........................................................169
11.4.4. Usage ...........................................................................171
Key Terms ..............................................................................................172
Topics for Discussion and Exercises .........................................................173

Review ..................................................................................................174
References .............................................................................................185
Dictionaries ...........................................................................................187
Glossary ................................................................................................188

Preface

This book is based upon a series of lectures on English Lexicology
delivered at the Ural State Pedagogical University of Yekaterinburg,
Russia.
The theoretical Course in Modern English Lexicology forms a part
of the curriculum for the English Departments in Foreign Languages
and Linguistic Institutes.
In accordance with the basic aim the Guide incorporates lectures,
topics for discussion and exercises that cover the main areas of
lexicology. The Course highlights the recent tendencies in the linguistic
science; it combines theoretical study and practice.
Each chapter provides a variety of instructional activities that help
students evaluate the information they have learned, express their
thoughts and analyse the most pressing issues of current lexicology.
The book includes a list of terms and concepts.
All these materials are aimed at expanding students’ language
knowledge. They enhance theoretical competence, students’ reflective
thinking whenever they have a problem to solve, and challenge students
to make individual judgements.
It is hoped that this approach will be conducive to a better
understanding of the fundamental principles of lexicology, and students
will find much of value in this book. We’d appreciate any comments or
suggestions you may have for improving this text.

Galina N. Babich

Introduction

It is both a pleasure and a privilege to write the introduction for
this exceptional guide. As an American who formerly taught English, I
only wish I had access to the wealth of information provided herein.
Indeed, students of any age, teachers of English throughout the world,
or any person with an interest in language will find this contribution
both engaging and informative. This wellwritten book has a global
appeal.
The author has been my friend and professional colleague for over
a decade. In this guide she displays an amazing grasp of this branch of
linguistics. The accomplishment does not surprise me, however, as
Dr. Babich has long been a “citizen of the world”, studying, observing,
and writing about her experiences. Readers of many nations will enjoy
this book and I recommend it highly.

Jeanne C. Baxter, Ph.D., Professor Emeritus
Northeastern Illinois University, Chicago, Illinois, USA
Partner, Quality Education Associates

C h a p t e r  1

LANGUAGE AND LEXICOLOGY

Po l o n i u s: What do you read, my lord?
H a m l e t: Words, words, words.
Po l o n i u s: What is the matter, my lord?
H a m l e t: Between who?
Po l o n i u s: I mean the matter that you
read, my lord.
William Shakespeare, Hamlet

1.1. The Object of Lexicology

Lexicology (of Greek origin: lexis “word” + logos “learning”)
(ca.1828) is a branch of linguistics concerned with words. It is a study
of words. All the words of a language make up its vocabulary or lexicon
(1603). To study the lexicon of English is to study all aspects of the
vocabulary of language — how words are formed, how they have
developed, how they are used, how they relate in meaning to each other,
and how they are handled in dictionaries.
Lexical study is a widerange domain, involving such diverse areas
as the sense relationships between words, the use of abbreviations, puns
and euphemisms, the compilation of dictionaries and many others.
Thus, lexicology deals with the vocabulary and characteristic features
of words and wordgroups.
The word is the basic unit of the lexical system of a language resulting
from the association of a particular meaning with a particular group of
sounds capable of a particular grammatical employment. It is the
smallest language unit that can stand alone as a complete utterance.
From the lexical aspect the word may express one or several notions
being in different relations among themselves.
The term wordgroup denotes a group of words that exists in the
language as a readymade unit, has the unity of meaning and of
syntactical function.

Modern approaches to the word are characterized by two different
levels of study: syntagmatic and paradigmatic (we owe this 2dimensional model of language structure to the Swiss linguist Ferdinand
de Saussure.) On the paradigmatic (substitution) level, the word is
studied in its relationship with other words in the vocabulary system.
On the syntagmatic (sequence) level, the word is analyzed in its linear
relationships with words in connected speech.
One further important objective of lexicological studies is the study
of the vocabulary as a system. The vocabulary can be studied by means
of two approaches: descriptive or synchronic (from Greek “syn” —
“together with” and “chronos” — “time”) and historical or diachronic
(“dia” — “through”), i.e. the synchronic approach is concerned with
the vocabulary of a language at the given stage of its development, the
diachronic approach deals with the changes and the development of
vocabulary in course of time.

1.2. Branches of Lexicology

What are the constituent parts of lexicology? There are specific
subbranches of lexicology. They are: etymology, wordformation,
semantics, phraseology, lexicography, etc., each of which has its own
aim of study, its own object of investigation, its own methods of
linguistic research. As an example we look at the question of sources
of lexicon.
The great quality of English is its teeming vocabulary, 80 per cent
of which is foreignborn. A glance through a modest etymological
dictionary of the English language will immediately reveal the variety
of immigrants. For example, Arabic is a collection of words that have
passed into English: admiral, magazine, almanac, camel, giraffe, cotton,
mohair, amber, apricot, alcohol, asparagus, candy, coffee, orange, rice,
sugar, sofa.
Precisely because its roots are so varied — Celtic, Germanic
(German, Scandinavian and Dutch) and Romance (Latin, French,
and Spanish) — it has words in common with virtually every language
in Europe: German, Yiddish, Dutch, Flemish, Danish, Swedish,

French, Italian, Portuguese, and Spanish. English is unique in this
respect.
The following list provides a sample set of words that have been
incorporated into English:

French: cuisine, army, elite, sautе´, culdesac, raffle.
Latin: cup, fork, pound, vice versa.
Greek: polysemy, synonymy, chemistry, physics, phenomenon.
Native American languages: caucus, pecan, raccoon, powwow.
Spanish: junta, siesta, cigar.
German: rucksack, hamburger, frankfurter, seminar.
Scandinavian languages: law, saga, ski, them, they, their.
Italian: piano, soprano, confetti, spaghetti, vendetta.
South Asian languages: bungalow, jungle, sandal, thing.
Yiddish: goy, knish, schmuck.
Dutch: cruise, curl, dock, leak, pump, scum, yacht.
Chinese: mandarin, tea, serge.
Japanese: bonsai, harakiri, kimono, tycoon, karate, judo.

There is an important balance between the stock of native words
and borrowings into English. In a survey of the 1,000 most frequently
used words in English, it was found that only 61.7 per cent had old
English origin. The other 38.3 per cent were borrowed from a variety
of other languages: 30.9 per cent French, 2.9 per cent Latin, 1.7 per cent
Scandinavian, 1.3 per cent mixed, and 0.3 per cent Low German and
Dutch. (Stefanie Jannedy. Language Files. The Ohio State University,
Columbus, 6th ed., p. 136.)
Thus, there is a specific branch of lexicology — etymology, the goal
of which is the discovery of earlier, “true”, meanings of words and their
origin.
Word formation turns out to play a crucial part in English
vocabulary growth. A word can consist of a prefix, a base, and a suffix.
Not every word, however, will have a prefix and/or a suffix. A prefix
is one or more syllables that can be added to the front of a word or
base, while a suffix can be added to the end. Their function is to change
the meaning of the word. Many prefixes and suffixes come from Latin
or Greek.

Look at the following word:

LINGU
IST
IC
Base
Suffix
Suffix

The meaning of these parts is:

lingu — tongue, language

ist — noun suffix

ic — adjectival suffix

Therefore we know that this is an adjective referring to something
about language.
Have you ever heard the word educationalize? There is a pattern
that permits the addition of al to almost any noun ending in ion. In
turn, the pattern is very extensive for adding the “factitive” suffix ize
to any adjective ending in this suffix al.
Very often suffixes change meanings of words. For example, verbs
can be turned into adjectives by adding ed and ing. The ed is usually
a passive form that shows the quality a person or thing feels: I felt bored.
However, an ing is an active form which usually shows the quality a
person or thing gives to others: She made me feel boring. Compare
surprised and surprising, puzzled and puzzling, excited and exciting, etc.
Thus, the study of the morphology of the word, or the parts of a
word, and the patterns on which a language builds new words is the
subject matter of wordformation.
One more issue to be taken into consideration is the statistics of
English which are astonishing. Of all the world’s languages (which now
number some 2,700), it is the richest in vocabulary. The compendious
Oxford English Dictionary lists about 500,000 words; and a further
half million technical and scientific terms remain uncatalogued.
According to traditional estimates, neighbouring German has a
vocabulary of about 185,000 words and French fewer than 100,000.
An essential part of investigations in lexicology is reflected in
dictionary making — lexicography, which is also a branch of lexicology.
Dictionaries are descriptions of the distribution of language units
(usually words) in terms of linguistic and cultural contexts.

What shall we call the units of meaning which appear as the
headwords in a dictionary? The tradition is to call them words. However,
in a serious study of the lexicon the term lexeme is used. The term
lexeme, introduced by Benjamin Lee Whorf in 1938, has been used for
the lexical word. A lexeme is a unit of lexical meaning, which exists
regardless of any inflectional endings it may have or the number of
words it may contain. Thus, the headwords in a dictionary are all
lexemes.
Lexicology deals with words, their meaning and vocabulary
structure. And what are the problems that can be studied referring to
the words? They are:

— the definition of the word,

— the meaning of the word,

— the processes of semantic change,

— word groups,

— combinability,

— idioms,

— the structure of the lexicon and several other central concepts.

1.3. Lexicology and Sociolinguistics

What is the place of lexicology among other linguistic disciplines?
The component parts of the theory of any language are: theoretical
grammar, theoretical phonetics, and lexicology. Grammatical system
of the language has been studied for several centuries already while
lexicology and theoretical phonetics became separate fields of
linguistics only in the 19th century.
What makes lexicology a special science, so different from grammar
or phonetics? There is a tremendous difference between lexicology, on
the one hand, and phonology, morphology and syntax, on the other.
And the difference lies in the fact that the wordstock (the vocabulary)
of a language directly and immediately reacts to whatever happens in
the social life of the speech community in question.

The extralinguistic factors influence usage and development of
language. They are dealt with in sociolinguistics which may be defined
as the study of the influence produced upon language by various social
factors. This influence is particularly strong in lexis. Let’s consider the
following examples:
The new language of cyberspace (“cybervocabulary”). As computers
gradually extended their influence, so did cyber, as a prefix having to
do with computers and electronic communication. Cybernetics (1948)
became the progenitor of a wide range of cybercompounds in the 1980s
and 90s, relating to the use of the Internet, and virtual reality:
cyberphobia, cyberpunk, cyberspace, cyberart, cyberhippy, cyberlawyer,
cyberworld, cybermat, cybercop, cybercha, cybercommunity, cybernaut,
cybrarian — the new language of cyberspace. Many words discussing
technology are coined with byte, net, mega, web, and digi: digitized
cyberads, gigabyte, megalomania.
PIN (1981) is an abbreviation of personal identification number, a
number allocated by a bank, etc., to a customer for use with a cash
card. (1981 Sunday Times: Cards with PINs written on them have been
stolen <...>.)
Email (1982) is an abbreviation of electronic mail, which by the
middle of the 1980s has established itself as the standard term; hacker
(1983), Internet (1986), cellphone (1984), mobile (1990), spam (1994),
web (1994). English took on a new meaning for a word over 400 years
old, at the same time conferring a new meaning on a punctuation mark
once simply called “period”, now a “dot” as in “dot com”.
The power of English is not confined to the invention and
manufacture of new technology. Dis, diss(1986) is to put someone
down, to show disrespect for a person by insulting language or
behaviour. “Are you dissing me?” = Are you showing disrespect for
me? Disis a permanent feature of political discussion that includes
disagreement, disputes, disappointments, disillusion, distress, dissidents,
and disorder.
Another example: the suffix –holic, aholic, oholoc (workaholic
[1968]) describes “allconsuming obsessions”, not all of them serious.
We could be addicted to play, foods, shopping, news, credit, and junk:
golfaholic, footballaholic, computerholic, leisureholic, etc. Yahoo
published a news story “Eating Chocolate Is Healthy, Doctors Say” by